Panda Valley is located in Baima Village, Yutang Town, Dujiangyan City, 60 km (37 miles) from Chengdu. The entire valley covers 1.34 square kilometers (331 acres). The Dujiangyan Panda Valley is organized in a way that encourages pandas to return to the wild.
In Dujiangyan Panda Valley, giant pandas are gradually returning to the wild.
In a semi-primitive wilderness transition experiment, they temporarily live in caves that look like bunkers. They will continue to be trained to complete this transition phase until researchers are sure they are capable of returning to the wild.
On January 11, 2012, the first batch of residents -- Xingrong, Xingya, Gongzai, Yingying, Zhizhi and Qiqi -- moved into Panda Valley in Dujiangyan. They all have their own characteristics. Xingrong and Xingya are twins; Yingying likes to play and rest in the tree; Zhizhi is very active and Qiqi looks very beautiful. Many of you may have probably heard of Gongzai: the inspiration for the animated movie "Kung Fu Panda 2," he is the star of the entire valley. Gongzai is very outgoing and strong for his age.
The Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Base spent nearly a year selecting and breeding 108 pandas based on their family tree, health status, genetic background, and gender matching.
In the subadult, which is like the childhood of human equivalent of childhood, they grow rapidly and are highly adaptable to new environments.
The challenge of releasing giant pandas back into the wild
First, pandas may lack the ability to survive in the wild. The release of giant pandas to the wild has high requirements for its environmental adaptability, behavior, health, genetics and so on. After more than 20 years of development, Chengdu has bred five generations of pandas. This is by far the world's largest captive panda population, the largest in generations. In other words, these giant pandas have been out of the wild for a long time, and their adaptability and survival ability in the wild needs to be observed.
Second, there is a lack of scientific data, systematic research and disease control on the released giant pandas. Although pandas have been released in the past, IS has not been entirely successful. At present, scientific and systematic research is still in progress. At the same time, there are many challenges in protecting released pandas from infectious and zoonotic diseases.
Third, the task requires financial and policy support from the state, as the study of wildlife release is a complex and systematic scientific project.
